Chapter 4 — Theoretical Framings
Chapter 4 surveys the theoretical frameworks that inform this dissertation’s understanding of collaboration, authorship, and creative interaction in contemporary music practice. It situates the Iterative Feedback Model for Collaborative Composition (IFMCC) within a constellation of discourses spanning creativity studies, sociology of art, performance studies, and musicology. Rather than offering a comprehensive literature review, the chapter develops a conceptual vocabulary through which the structures and dynamics observed in the case studies can be interpreted.
The chapter begins by outlining key perspectives from collaborative creativity research, drawing on authors such as John-Steiner, Sawyer, Paulus, and Nijstad. These scholars conceptualize creativity as a socially embedded and distributed process shaped by shared attention, negotiation, and emergent collective structures. Their work provides a foundation for understanding how group dynamics, tacit knowledge, and iterative exchange contribute to artistic outcomes—features central to the IFMCC.
The discussion then moves to music-specific theories of collaboration and authorship, referencing scholarship and practice in Western Art Music (WAM) and adjacent fields. Authors such as Taylor, Clarke and Doffman, Hayden and Windsor, Sennett, Zattra, and Donin provide theoretical and empirical insights into how composers and performers negotiate roles, interpretative freedom, and decision-making authority. Case studies in collaborative composition—ranging from improvisation-based practices to technologically mediated works—highlight the diversity of approaches through which contemporary practitioners engage with co-authorship and shared agency. These perspectives illuminate the broader ecosystem within which the IFMCC intervenes.
Another central strand of the chapter addresses technological mediation and its effects on artistic processes. Digital tools, interactive interfaces, networked performance environments, and hybrid notational systems reconfigure the ways musicians communicate, perceive, and coordinate their actions. Literature on mediation (e.g., Donin, Zattra, Hooper) underscores how technologies do not merely support artistic work but actively shape creative trajectories, distributing attention, labour, and responsibility. These insights are crucial for understanding the technologically mediated contexts of Case Studies II (I See You) and III (Lieder aus der Fremde).
The chapter also considers the historical and aesthetic lineage of participatory, relational, and process-based art practices, referencing figures such as Pauline Oliveros, George Lewis, Jennifer Walshe, James Saunders, and others who challenge traditional hierarchies of authorship and expand listening and interaction as creative acts. These practices resonate with the philosophical orientation of the IFMCC, particularly in their emphasis on responsiveness, embodied knowledge, and shared meaning-making.
Taken together, these theoretical framings articulate the dissertation’s conceptual position: collaboration in music is understood as an ecology of relations, encompassing human actors, technological systems, institutional structures, and aesthetic norms. Agency is viewed as distributed and negotiated; authorship as processual rather than fixed; and creativity as something that emerges through feedback, constraint, and interaction.
Chapter 4 therefore provides the analytical and conceptual tools necessary to interpret the empirical material presented in the subsequent chapters. It anchors the IFMCC within existing scholarly and artistic discourses while clarifying the model’s distinct contribution: a methodologically explicit, iterative approach to collaborative composition that bridges theoretical reflection and situated artistic practice.
